This contribution1 provides a corpus-based analysis of some (morpho-) syntactic factors that influence the choice between the third person clitic pronoun il and the demonstrative pronoun celui-ci : the syntactic function of the antecedent, as well as its form, and the syntactic function of the pronoun itself. Special attention is paid to a series of counterexamples to Zribi-Hertz’s (1992) constraint on discursive promotion. The different tendencies observed for il and celui-ci with respect to the syntactic criteria examined, provide evidence for the hypothesis that il marks topic continuity and celui-ci a topic shift and ultimately lead to a reformulation of the constraint on discursive promotion in terms of topic promotion.